Quiz photo B

The following is my attempt to correctly identify the three birds in
"Birding" magazine's February photo quiz. For those who subscribe, please
feel free to follow along or chime in. For those who don't subscribe, you
really should. This is a cross-post on Birdchat and Tweeters.

My first attempt was with Quiz bird A, a dark perched buteo that I called as
a dark-morph Ferruginous Hawk. By comparison, Quiz bird B looks easy. It's
a photo of a dove, in good light, with a detailed look at the face, breast,
belly, and the undersurface of the tail. The bird seems pale brown, without
distinctive markings on the head and body. The underside of the tail is
black with white edging on some of the feathers. A dove ID should be pretty
straight-forward. Compared to sparrows, shorebirds, hawks and empids, who
ever heard of a dove identification challenge? So I sit back with a cup of
tea and my Sibley's, and march through page by page until I find this bird.

Page 255:

Morning Dove. Not our bird; the plumage is too pale for MODO, no blue
orbital ring is seen, and the tail is blunt, not pointed.

White-winged Dove. Not it either; our bird has no blue orbital ring, no
white band on the end of the tail, and seems less stocky than White-winged
Dove.

Page 256:

Eurasian Collared-Dove. Again this bird seems larger and stockier than

Quiz bird. Our bird is brown, not gray, and has a black tail, not white.
Also, EUCD has a black bill, not horn-colored like out bird.

Ringed Turtle-Dove. All the objectives above to EUCD also apply to Ringed
Turtle-Dove, except for the stocky body build. Too many inconsistencies to
by the Quiz bird; time to move on.

Page 257:

Spotted Dove. Our bird is too pale for Spotted Dove, has a dark underside of
the tail not white, and seems smaller and not as long as Spotted Dove.

White-tipped Dove. Our bird lacks the red orbital ring, white-tipped tail,
and seems too slender for WTDO. Next!

Page 258:

Key West Quail Dove: Not even close. The Quiz bird has no facial stripe, the
color and body shape are all wrong.

Inca Dove. Our bird does not have scaled plumage, the tail length is shorter
than INDO, and the underside of the tail is black, not white. Wrong again.

Page 258:

Ruddy Ground-Dove. No gray head contrasting with cinnamon body on our bird,
and its bill seems horn colored rather than gray.

Common Ground-Dove. Our bird lacks the pink-to-red bill base of COGD, and
lacks the white tip on the end of a short black tail.

Page 260:

Rock Dove. Hold it, something is wrong. I just ran out of doves! I'm into
the pigeons. I won't go into detail, but ain't no way our guy is a pigeon.
Now I'm in trouble. Take a deep breath, and go back and see what I missed. I
go back through Sibley's, and everything listed above still seems accurate.
It is time to think of a new way to approach this problem. Is there anything
with the Quiz bird that is special in some way? Size, shape, and color can
be somewhat subjective, but the under-tail pattern of the quiz bird seems
fairly unique; all black except for white edging on some of the feathers.
Can I find a dove with that pattern? Time to break out the other fields
guides.

National Geographic doesn't help. It has a nice comparison of the under tail
patterns of Eurasian Collared, Ringed Turtle, Spotted and Mourning Doves,
but none are black with white edging. Peterson's Western is even worse, no
under tail patterns at all! Grim determination is fighting off panic and
resignation of defeat. Last book I have that could help is Kaufman's "Birds
of North America", the "guide for beginners".

Eureka! Page 191 of Kaufman's guide has a photo of a bird so close to the
Quiz bird that it could be the same individual. Look at Ruddy Ground-Dove;
the gray-head and cinnamon-body color pattern is seen in the male, the
females are more uniform in color like our bird. Sibley's shows a gray bill,
Nat Geo shows a black bill, but Kaufmann's photo shows a horn colored bill
just like the Quiz bird. Most convincing is the under tail pattern, a
dead-on match. This proves two basic principles of life:

"Perseverance furthers (I Ching, ancient Chinese book of divination)

"You can't own too many field guides" (Stephens)

Quiz bird B is a female Ruddy Ground-Dove.

Corrections, comments, opinions welcome.



Good birding,


Jack Stephens
Edmonds, WA
jstephens62 at comcast.net